Upcoming Internet Censorship in Australia

Mon, 2008-12-22 23:07 — Healyhatman

Question::

How worried should I be about the Australian government's plans for internet "filtering" in order to "protect the children". Is my belief that religious conservatives will hijack the system in order to censor material they disagree with a justified one, or am I being overly paranoid? And do you or any other atheist honestly think that they WON'T manage to force their way in to the censorship process?

Atheist Answer:

Though it is a concern, I'm not overly concerned.

Conservatives of all sorts will be trying to add all kinds of material to the exclusion list, not just the religious ones. It'll be a battle for many different groups to keep their material available, not just the non-religious.

That said, there's always a way round. The internet outside the World Wide Web is almost completely unaffected; torrents and most bulletin boards will carry on regardless. Even banned websites can be accessed using a number of methods: mirrors, proxies, etc.

That's assuming that the new laws are actually enforced in any serious way. Going by precedent, that's not likely.